


Bid Them All Home

by Crowgirl



Category: Death in Paradise
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff without Plot, Incidental Plot Only, Incidental Use of Current Events, Light Angst, Mutual Pining, Not Canon Compliant, Pining, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 18:57:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9137185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: Richard stops hearing. It’s only happened to him twice before -- both times as the result of being far too close to an explosion -- but it happens now in the reception area of New Scotland Yard.





	

Richard Poole sits in his re-claimed flat, a freshly poured pint in his hand, an equally fresh parcel of fish and chips neatly opened over a kitchen towel, Arsenal handily beating Chelsea in the late afternoon match, and wonders why none of it seems as satisfactory as it should.

Rain is pouring down; he can hear it in a steady patter on the narrow sill. It’s cold and grey and a gale off the Channel is forecast starting around midnight. He isn’t looking forward to getting to work tomorrow; he hates feeling damp all day and it’s almost as unavoidable during a Channel gale as it had been almost every day on Saint Marie. The only real difference is that the rain is cold here.

He puts down his beer glass on the edge of the waxed paper so it won’t mark the table and walks over to pull the curtains shut. He stands for a minute looking out into a grey street, running with water, without a single spot of color. 

* * *

‘Poole, I’m putting you on a new project.’

Richard shoots to his feet, rattling the teacup on his desk. ‘Sir?’

Archer sighs. ‘You really don’t need to stand to attention every time I talk to you.’

Richard glances down at himself. ‘This is -- just how I stand, sir.’

‘Oh.’ Archer blinks. ‘Right. Well.’ He clears his throat and goes on: ‘The French national police want to set up some sort of on the spot liaising with us over the Calais migrant camp and possible security threats via the Chunnel and--’ He shrugs and waves a hand. ‘Well, whatever else comes up along those lines. You get the idea.’

‘Whom do I contact, sir?’

‘Oh, no, they’ll contact you.’ Archer smiles, not entirely unkindly. ‘I know how you love working with a team -- there’s three of them coming, apparently. Should be here around noon today. They’ll be asking for you down at reception.’

* * *

His phone rings at exactly noon and he puts that down as a point in their favor. In his experience, the French are not known for arriving places on time. Or doing things on time. Or in the correct order. Or following the correct procedure. Or-- 

‘I’m DI Richard Poole -- Commander Archer asked me to take charge of this project from our end.’ Richard holds his hand out.

‘Emile Gustave.’ The man -- taller and older than Richard and noticeably better-dressed -- shakes his hand quickly. ‘This is Mathieu Joly and--’

Richard stops hearing. It’s only happened to him twice before -- both times as the result of being far too close to an explosion -- but it happens now in the reception area of New Scotland Yard. The world goes entirely silent around him as Camille straightens up from setting down her bag and smiles at him. Sound only floods back in with her voice and he’s aware that his palms are slick, his tie is too tight, and his heartbeat must be audible to everyone in the foyer. 

‘Hello, Richard. It’s good to see you again.’

* * *

Richard says goodnight and excuses himself while Gustave and Joly pack up their notes from the afternoon, chatting to each other in quiet French. He’s not running away. He can’t possibly be running away in the office building he works in every day. They’re simply done for the day and he’s walking to his office to collect his things. It’s merely an accident that this is all happening while Camille is out of the room.

He isn’t a stupid man -- of all his faults, being unintelligent is not one of them. Over the months since he left the island, he’s become acutely aware of how much of his leaving had been sheer cowardice under a veneer of professionalism. During his last year on Saint Marie, he had told himself a thousand times that he could control his feelings, sit on them, squash them into oblivion; he had told himself that it was nothing, all on his side, he was imagining anything more than friendliness and good humor from her. And, anyway, Camille was like that with everyone -- well, with almost everyone. 

And then -- and then there had just been too many times when it didn’t _feel_ like friendliness or good humor; it felt like he was being asked a question. And he knew -- he _knew_ the answer he wanted to give wasn’t one he _could_ give. He was her superior officer; he wasn’t an islander; he wasn’t like any of the men she had ever dated, no matter how briefly; he was at least ten years older than her and _that_ was only thinking in the crassest of chronological terms--

‘Richard.’

He freezes and curses himself for forgetting that the ladies’ room on this floor is down a side hall in the same direction as his office. 

‘Are you really running away?’

‘No, of course not.’ He turns around. 

‘I’m sorry I didn’t warn you in advance.’ Camille’s accent has gotten stronger but he can still tell from her tone that she is not at all sorry. ‘I know you would have appreciated that.’ Her voice becomes a bit sharper and she sets her hands on her hips in a stance he recognizes. ‘Much like I would have appreciated _some_ reply to more than _one_ email.’

He winces and decides to ignore that; he has no defense. ‘Yes. Well. That would have been. Nice of you.’ He clears his throat. ‘How -- how have you been?’ 

Camille shrugs. ‘Fine. How have _you_ been?’

Richard has been bracing himself against this question for five hours and, now it’s finally been asked, it isn’t as bad as he had thought. ‘I’ve been... fine. Yes. Fine.’ 

‘Are you happy to be home?’

He opens his mouth to answer and bites his lips together so the words he hadn’t been expecting don’t tumble into the open: _I’m not home._ In this moment, he doesn’t know what his face looks like; it wasn’t that he hadn’t _thought_ those words before but they had never been his first reaction before.

Camille watches him for a long moment and her expression softens, the official expression of Detective Sergeant Camille Bourdey fading into the achingly lovely Camille he has tried not to remember. ‘Fidel and Dwayne ask after you.’

Richard has to clear his throat before he asks, ‘You’ve been back recently?’

‘Fidel and I have been emailing since I left,’ Camille says. ‘He lets Dwayne think he’s stealing his keyboard sometimes; I know it’s him when I get the good dirty jokes.’

‘Ah. And -- and how’s your mother?’

‘Oh, she’s very well -- getting ready for the tourist season.’

‘When _isn’t_ it tourist season?’ He can see Catherine humming her way through cleaning the bar in the early morning, pushing the door open well before the actual opening time because she’ll never admit it but she loves having the lost tourists stumble in. He wonders if she still shows off her tea-making skills to any passing English visitors.

Camille laughs and Richard has a sudden vision of his flat -- small, often dim because it doesn’t get the sun except for a few hours first thing in the morning -- and then a vision of _Camille_ in his flat and his throat hurts. He clears it again. ‘Your colleagues were packing up when I--’

‘I wanted to be sure you didn’t dodge our dinner date.’

‘Our -- what?’

Camille glances down the corridor as if checking to see if anyone is coming. It’s past five and the offices along this stretch are deserted. She comes closer, close enough that he can smell the perfume she doesn’t wear. He remembers it vividly from the night in the observatory, waking up only a few inches from her on a rough and uncomfortable floor. He has very deliberately _not_ thought about that night dozens of times and having it suddenly brought to life three steps away from his office is making him feel slightly dizzy. 

She stops a step away from him and studies him for a long minute. He has no idea what his expression is saying so he just stands, feeling a familiar prickle of sweat under his arms and along his spine that he knows now he should never have blamed on island heat. The feeling only increases when Camille reaches out and takes his hand. The direct touch sends a spike of heat straight to his gut and he flinches. He stares at their fingers, then up at her, then back at their hands, and isn’t at all surprised when she smiles, and then chuckles at him, leaning forward so her hair nearly brushes his forehead. 

‘Richard. I am taking you to dinner although you will have to tell me where we’re going because English food is...not something I know.’ Her tone makes it clear she isn’t particularly thrilled by the idea of _getting_ to know it. 

His mouth is stone-dry and he swallows desperately, forcing himself not to grab at her hand like the teenager he had never really been. ‘I -- there’s a place -- we’d have to get a cab --’

‘And then you will show me your flat and I will tell you about my flat in Paris and I will show you pictures of my cat--’

‘You have a cat?’

‘--and then…’ She pauses for a second that feels like an hour, watching him and all he can think to do is to nod. She smiles and goes on, ‘And then you will show me your bed.’ 

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from _[Coriolanus](http://www.bartleby.com/70/3642.html)_.
> 
> And I had to write this, okay? I _had_ to. Was anyone happy with Season 3, Episode 1? No. No-one was happy with Season 3, Episode 1 because it made no bloody sense and -- and -- and just _no_. No. So I fixed it.
> 
> There is now a very brief follow-up to this, courtesy of the Twelvetide Drabbles 2017 challenge: [Cats Are (Sometimes) Nice](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13277163).  
>  
> 
>   
> 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [we'll no further](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9241499) by [elizajane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane)




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